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The proprietor shook her hand and promised to call her tomorrow, which Arkady took to mean that interview had gone well. Not all of them had, especially not the ones at the bakery next door to the music shop; she had emailed to ask about the position and they had emailed back that they just felt she wasn't a good fit for the position. She unnerved them. Well, their loss. Arkady was amazing, just... Quiet. Right?

Anyway, she bought a coffee and hopped down the little stairs into the part of the park that she thought of as 'the Bowl'. It was a natural depression on one side, a slow sloping hill down to a paved area with chessboards and a fountain and, sometimes, musicians. Today there was a man playing guitar, and Arkady settled in to listen and enjoy, like she usually did. Sometimes, she heard memories in the chords of the music. Maybe the notes jarred things loose, or maybe it was just correlation rather than causation--but she liked it there, in the park, with the sound of the running water and the shouting children and no one there caring in the least that Arkady Smith had joined them and no one notjing she existed at all. It was like getting to spectate on everyone else's life.

Normally they sang songs she didn't really know, things no one in the building she lived in listened to, but today she recognized the song: it was one Kaatje liked to listen to while she painted. On the one hand, she felt proud of herself for recognizing it--and on the other, it had nudged something into place. The blue-haired musician was familiar to her. She was sure she had known him, once.

It wouldn't hurt, she decided, to sing with him. She got up and crossed the little plaza, settling herself on the bench next to him. When he started on the next verse--once I rose above the noise and confusion--she joined him, her sweet contralto mixing prettily with his voice. They sounded, she thought, like something out of one of Finn's dumb hipster records. They sounded good.

Oh, she hoped he didn't mind!

Arkady smiled, a faint pink tinge crossing her cheeks for a moment. She sounded great? Well, she knew that, but usually people just said... Shut up, Arkady, that's creepy and you're scaring Nick. Which wasn't ever her intention. Was it her fault she liked the songs she did? "Umm... no, you're special," she said, with a tiny shrug as she shifted towards him. By now, she'd learned that she couldn't advertise the details of her memory loss--when she called it amnesia she felt like she was speaking with a throat full of glass--so telling him that he looked familiar was right out. Instead she said, "My housemates don't like it when I sing, they say it's creepy," and tucked one shoulder upwards for a second before dropping it again.

Peering at him, she was all set to commit his face to memory and excuse herself, but. But he had... he had tattoos. And tattoos were the coolest thing. She reached out to twitch his sleeve up just a little. "Oh wow," she said, "Those are really lovely! I've always kind of wanted to--oh, um, I'm so awkward, sorry." Straightening up, she squared her shoulders and offered him a hand. "My name's Arkady Ashlyn-Smith." That was not even a little bit of a mouthful. "Most people call me Ash." Actually, they all called her Arkady. But she was working on that, okay? She was going to have a cool, asexual nickname!

Arkady was her name. Therefore, it was a girl's name.

"Do you come here a lot? I've only just moved here, so I'm sort of still feeling things out." There. That explained why she didn't know anything. And why she was looking for a job!

Alex. That was a nice name. She smiled at him, a sweet and natural little thing. "It suits you," she said, and that was true. He looked like an Alex, whatever that meant. He looked like that name was just meant for him. Like. He exuded an Alex-ness... Whatever that meant.

She leaned in to look at the tattoos, ghosting her fingers over the trailing branches. "Wow," she said, "he's amazing. I've always wanted tattoos, but my mother said it wasn't ladylike." That was a lie and she told it without flinching. "Are they done in studios or parlors? Maybe you could tell me the name of the one where he works?"

Speaking of work. Arkady lifted her head and looked dutifully in the direction he pointed. "I just came from an interview there," she cried, delighted. "I think it went well. I hope it went well." Why couldn't she stop smiling? The happiness she felt from finding this guy was closer to what she would expect from finding Finn than finding some random.

He mentioned the city being crazy and she laughed, because she thought she was supposed to. "I've only had to punch out one monster," she said, "and I think it might have given me enough 'punk'--" here she made literal air quotations "--to get a job, so I don't mind." She held up her left hand, the knuckles neatly bandaged that morning by Finn. The splint on her right wrist was much less badass, though. She tugged her sleeve further over it. "I mean, unless you meant some other crazy?"

Arkady tossed her braid over her shoulder and dropped her arms in front of her again. "I'd like that," she said. "I don't really like meeting new people that much." Well, that wasn't exactly true. She liked meeting Alex, and she'd loved meeting Finn... but it was hit-and-miss, generally measured out by some incomprehensible rhetoric from the golden fog that still lingered inside her head. It was easier to ignore now, memories becoming more entrenched in her head as she made more of them, but it was but still there. It bothered her more every day, like a scab she couldn't quite pick loose.

She smiled a little shyer at his laughter--it was meant to be funny, but, she didn't know. It made her a little sad that he laughed. She didn't know why. Why didn't she know why? "I don't know," she said, "It's got something I don't think a lot of other places have." An ancient galactic war for the cosmos, maybe. Or else just. This. Arkady didn't know the significance of the people her barely-there memories pointed her to, but she didn't want to be anywhere else in the world than in Destiny City--here was where all the memories lived.

"I like your hair color," she said, sending the conversation off in another direction. "It's real, isn't it? I love all the colors in it."

She smiled, gratefully. If he understood, then that was one thing and she didn't have to make up any more lies. She would be just Naturally Socially Awkward, and he would get it, because he knew! That actually was a huge relief--it felt like she was getting away with murder, or something like it. "I don't know anyone with weird hair except you," she sighed. "I guess my landlord has orange hair, but does that count?"

Arkady twirled her own red hair around one finger, tugged it. "Mine's always like this. Just boring and pin-straight and boring. It doesn't curl even if you braid it when it's wet." Which apparently was a look a lot of people would kill for, but it mostly drove her up the wall. There were so many cute pincurl styles to try, and so little time to make them all happen.

"Everyone always asks me if the carpet matches the drapes, though," she sighed at him. "I don't know what it means. But they always laugh when I say that that would make the room look monochrome and boring."